


Relay

by thepurplewombat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Hermione is a bit mad, Hermione takes a mallet to the timeline, Mentions of Harry/Ginny, Mentions of Ron/Hermione - Freeform, Ron Weasley is a Bit Not Good, The Mirror of Maybe, Time Travel, Vaguely Dystopian Future, but that was in another country and besides the bastard's dead, death by chicken bone, don't mess with little old ladies, not a time-turner fic, quite a bit of character death in the first three chapters but it doesn't stick, they've got nothing to lose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-06 11:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16386719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: Hermione takes two steps back for a new way forward.





	1. 2 August 2090 – An Undisclosed Location, Wales

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this story is a bit strange, and I don't think it's going to be super long. Things should make more sense in the next chapter but for now all I can ask is, bear with me please?

Hermione was getting old. Was _already_ old, according to some, considering that she was going to be celebrating her eleventy-first birthday in just over a month, but that was irrelevant. After such a long time – so many endless years, so much lost time, she was finally free. _And_ she hadn’t even had to get blood on her hands to do it, either. No, Ron Weasley had finally departed this plane, sped on his way by a chicken bone.

Well, she’d told him that his table manners were atrocious, and he hadn’t listened, had he? Not that he’d listened to a word she’d said once the damn ring was on her finger. Not about continuing her studies, not about getting a job, not about wanting to wait to have kids…not _no_. But she’d been married, and wizards didn’t get divorced, and nobody would have believed her anyway. So she’d quietly withered away for nearly eighty years. After forty years, she had finally understood that she was never going to be free, and had brought out the very last thing she had made before she had been bound, body and magic and soul, to Ron.

The Mirror of Maybe, she’d called it, and she had been planning to present it as an application for an Artificer’s apprenticeship until she’d made the terrible, horrible mistake of taking one Ronald Bilius Weasley to her bed. It showed the past, but not ever the past of the time it was in. A branch in the tree, a different leg on the Trousers of Time. Tuning it had been a job and a half, but eventually she had managed to hone in on a single timeline. And promptly lost hours to it.

What it showed her was…amazing. Spectacular. A life of intellectual freedom and a passion so intense that even the memory of dark, dark eyes could send a shiver down her back. A Hermione who never bowed her head, a Hermione who was not bruised or broken. A Hermione who had exactly as many children as she wished – as it turned out, as long as they weren’t Ron’s, Hermione wanted many, _many_ children – and a fulfilling job and a husband who worshipped the ground she walked upon. And it wasn’t just her, either. Sometimes the Mirror had followed that other Hermione into Diagon Alley or to Hogwarts, and oh, the _beauty_ of it all. Diagon Alley rebuilt and beautiful, the beating heart of the wizarding world instead of a crime-ridden pit of filth and depravity. A wizarding world where passers-by whistled and waved and hugged hello, open and free and without, so far as Hermione could see, any fear at all. In forty years of watching, she had not seen a single violent crime, not a single protest or demonstration where witches and wizards were dragged protesting from the streets, their wands ground under hob-nailed Auror boots into the dirt. She had learned to lip-read, and had watched political debates play out without a single person looking over their shoulder, terrified of being sent to Azkaban for a wrong word in the wrong ear.

She wasn’t exactly sure how that other Hermione had found that joy, that life, but she _wanted it_. She wanted it for herself, and she wanted it for the Wizarding World, that free and open and happy world.

And when she had unexpectedly found herself free, she had very carefully disappeared. Nobody knew where she was. Not Harry, decrepit and as miserable in his own way as she was, not the cruel and impatient children who had always seemed to be more Ronald’s than her own, and certainly not the Ministry. They didn’t know where she was, or what she was doing, and thank God for that, because if they did, if they _knew_ what she was planning…well, Azkaban was the least of her worries.

Hermione looked at the thing she had built, a humming collection of copper and crystal and magic and electricity, and cackled. It was a masterpiece, worthy of a Grandmaster Artificer, and although it couldn’t do all she wanted, what it could do was more than enough. It had taken ten years to design and build, starting the day after she’d calmly watched her husband choke to death on a chicken bone, and it was quite unlike anything the world had seen before.

“Oh yes,” she murmured to herself. “This is going to be _fun_.”

She looked up, her wild white hair flying behind her, as her wards began to shriek.

“Dammit, they’ve found me,” she told her invention, which did not reply. She didn’t expect it to, but she’d become used to talking to inanimate objects over the past decade.

Her wards were holding, for now. She didn’t expect them to last very much longer, but then she didn’t need much time, did she? Only long enough to check her calibrations one last time, to make sure that she hadn’t missed something that would allow her to survive a longer jump. But no, her arithmancy was as correct as it had ever been, and there was no way she would survive if she pushed her invention past its limits.

Hermione cursed her old bones as she vanished all her papers, ten years of work gone in an instant, and gathered what she would need. The memories, the small PortaPenseive…the potion that would make all of this worthwhile, if she was right. All of it went into her bag, a more sophisticated version of the beaded bag she’d taken on the run so many decades ago – God, almost a century now! – and she strapped the bag to her body as she hustled herself into the uncomfortable copper-and leather stool in the middle of the device.

Her first and second level wards went almost simultaneously, and the screeching of the wards became almost frantic, biting into her brain like a chainsaw until it was almost an effort to ignore them.

But ignore them she did, as she calmly re-checked the settings yet again, going methodically down the mental checklist she’d created and refusing to be hurried. Hermione Granger was not about to toss a decade of work down the cacky because she got impatient at the last minute, not in this or any other world.

Finally, just as her fourth and final level of wards went critical, the checklist was complete and she reached, with a feeling of immense satisfaction, for the big copper-and-wood lever that would change the world.

_“Give me a lever and a place to stand_ ,” she quoted with immense satisfaction as she pulled the lever.

She watched, through a spinning, glowing mist, as the Aurors broke down her door, their wands at the ready, and then they were gone and the journey truly began.

It was as horrible as she had expected it to be. There was no direction, no sense of up or down. Simply a uniform grayness and the terrible disorientation as the globe of magic and metal that encased her spun and jumped through a space that was and was-not. She was immensely grateful for the anti-nausea potion she'd taken in preparation for this. The only thing that stopped her from being hurled about as though she was going down a waterfall in a barrel was the intricate safety harness she’d designed, and even so she knew she was going to be bruised by the end of the journey.

It seemed to take forever, as well it should, she told herself, closing her eyes against the horrible blankness of her surroundings. That did not help as much as she’d hoped, so she chose instead to focus her eyes on the dials in front of her. She concentrated so intensely on one particular dial that she was almost surprised when, with a shriek that seemed oddly appropriate to the tearing of space-time, the device broke through the veil of reality and deposited her, bruised and slightly smoking, in the basement of a house in Ottery St.Catchpole, where a woman sat in front of a mirror in an attitude of heartbreaking despair. Or at least, where she _had_ been doing that, until Hermione’s arrival.

The mirror-watching woman leapt to her feet at the first sound, and by the time the device had fully materialised was on her knees, clutching her ears in an attempt to silence the horrible, horrible noise.

The silence was sudden and complete.

The two women regarded each other warily through the thin veil of smoke.

They seemed almost polar opposites. One was ancient as the hills, her white hair in a mad cloud around a whiskey-eyed face full of angry defiance. The other, perhaps middle-aged, looked tired and beaten-down. Her hair, a mousy brown colour, was tightly tied back and her eyes were a dull pale brown that spoke of despair. Even her body-language spoke of meekness, of tiredness, and of pain.

And yet there was something…if an observer were to look closely at the women’s bone structure, they might wonder if they were relatives – if perhaps the old woman had had a daughter once. There was something there, beneath the difference in attitude. A similarity that tickled the brain, demanding a closer look.

“Oh my God,” the younger woman breathed, and as she spoke her spine seemed to straighten and a spark of life appeared in her eyes. “Oh my God, you actually did it.”

“I did indeed,” the old woman said with a certain unmistakeable smugness to her tone. “Hello, Hermione. It’s been a long time.”

 


	2. 18 September 2046 – Basement Room, Number 3 Silk Lane, Ottery St. Catchpole

Hermione Weasley stared at the old woman.

 _She looks like me_ , she thought nonsensically, although that wasn’t entirely true. The lines of age and grief in her face were the same ones Hermione could see the beginnings of in her own face, but there was something else there, something that Hermione hadn’t seen in herself since before the war. A kind of righteous fury, a fire in her eyes that dared the world to take her on that _this_ Hermione, chained by the travesty of a botched Marriage Rite, had not dared to show the world for four decades. And her _hair_! There was something comforting about the thought that even after so many years of tight restraint, her hair would go back to its voluminous self if given a chance.

Much like Hermione herself, actually, she thought with a wry smile.

“You…why are you here?” she asked quietly, moving to help her older self with the safety straps. “Surely _this_ isn’t the nexus point?” She looked around at the basement room where she’d spent so many hours in the past forty years. She hadn’t been allowed out for five days this time, and even then it had only been to clean up the house and make meals for Ronald before he’d pushed her back down the stairs and locked the doors on her. The wards didn't respond to her wand, even if she'd had a wand, which she didn't. There was no way that anything that happened in this room could affect the timeline in any meaningful way.

The other Hermione laughed bitterly.

“No, this isn’t the nexus point, girl,” she said, grunting as she got to her feet. “This is as far as I can go, though. You’ll have to take it from here.”

Hermione stilled, her blood pounding in her ears. Her eyes flicked between her older self and the time travel device, which looked like something from H.G Wells’ imagination, and was still throwing off small sparks of magic and electricity. It looked nothing like she had imagined it, and yet it looked exactly the way a time machine _should_ look, all leather and copper and wood and smoke, with a pilot’s seat festooned with straps.

“You mean, you want me to…”

“Take the message further? Yes, I do. I’ve worked the calculations every way I can and no matter what I do, the entropy build-up after the first thirty years increases exponentially. I managed fifty-three years, but then I’ve been using potions to fortify myself for this trip for the past twelve months.” The old woman looked up at Hermione curiously, her tilted head and tiny frame giving her an almost birdlike air. “I’ll be dead in a few hours. Entropic coalescence - I'll just dissolve and be gone. Price you pay for long-distance time travel, probably.”

She said it so calmly that it took a long moment for Hermione to register the words. She felt her knees go weak, and between the two of them they staggered crabwise to the only piece of furniture in the place, a battered old sofa with springs poking out. They sat down side-by-side, the old woman and the young one, and stared at the mirror. It was blank now, Hermione having switched it off the moment she heard the wrenching whine of the machine.

“Dead?”

“Yes, dead,” the woman said. “And so will you be, not long after you arrive, not that that should be any surprise to you.”

“It’s not,” Hermione said glumly. She hadn’t considered the inevitable build-up of entropy in long time-jumps, but it seemed so obvious now. And honestly, even if the entropy hadn’t been a factor her marriage vows would have killed her sooner or later. Ron liked to make a game of it, staying away until the power of her vows made her beg and crawl and plead with him to come back before the pain killed her or drove her mad. The thought made a fire race along her veins and she fixed her older self with a determined stare. “How did he die?”

“Chicken bone,” the old woman said with a certain amount of glee. “I told him he had terrible table manners, but did he listen? No. No, he did not. And then he was dead and it wasn’t even my fault, so the vows didn’t take me.”

Hermione opened her mouth, and then closed it again without saying anything. There wasn’t really much to say, was there? For decades now, Ron had been this massive figure in her life, the cruel and unmerciful god who punished her for every real or imagined infraction at his whim. To hear that he’d died from something so simple – a chicken bone, for Merlin’s bloody sake, done in by his atrocious table manners at long last – was somehow anticlimactic.

“Were you able to find anything out from his body?” she eventually asked.

“He’s infected,” her older self said. “He’s got more Dark Lord in him than Harry ever had. By the time he died I doubt if a tenth-part of Ron Weasley still existed.” The old woman sighed. “I didn’t manage to run the tests on Ginny, but…”

Hermione was massively unsurprised. The chances of Hermione being allowed to run strange tests on the Minister for Magic were…to call the chances slim was to waste an opportunity to use the word ‘infinitesimal’.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “If I go back I can…did you develop the potion?”

The potion was vital to the success of the plan. Well, the potions, really. One to remove Dark Magic from something and one…well, if it worked as she’d theorised it was the strongest healing potion ever made. Hermione had been working on it in her head for months now, since the first time she’d seen a glimpse of pale skin and dark eyes in the Mirror, and her alternate self had had fifty years more to refine the basic formula she’d come up with.

The Dark Magic potion was important for the fate of the world, though, while the healing potion was important to her personally.

In answer to her question, her older self extended her arm and pulled up her sleeve to reveal her forearm. Her _unmarked_ forearm. Hermione reached a shaking hand to trace the place where the foul slur marked her own arm.

“It sucked the Dark Magic potion right out, and I healed it just like that,” her older self said with a smirk. “There are a couple of doses in the bag, along with a bottle of the healing potion and their recipes. Just incase the potions don’t make the trip. But they should be fine. I made the bag lining from Harry’s old invisibility cloak. What was left of it after he tried to destroy it, anyway.”

“What else?”

“Memories,” the other woman said. “Memories from the mirror, if you need them, memories from me, I even managed to get some from Harry.”

“You’ve seen Harry?” Hermione asked, leaning closer to her counterpart. She hadn’t seen Harry in years, not since Ginny had become Minister for Magic and appointed Ron Head of the MLE. Harry had been made redundant shortly after that, and now he rarely left the mansion Ginny had constructed on the site of the Burrow.

“Briefly, about eight years ago,” the old woman said. “He’s not…you…I don’t know what to say. He was old. So very old, and tired. Couldn’t tell him what I was doing but he didn’t ask either, just handed over the memories. He might be dead by now. By then. I…didn’t really get the news, where I was.”

Hermione gripped the old woman’s shoulder, and the other woman put her hand over hers.

“Is there…is there anything else I need to know?” she asked quietly. “Before I go, I mean.”

The other Hermione’s head turned, and Hermione found herself transfixed by the look in her whiskey-coloured eyes.

“Be convincing, Hermione,” she said. “And don’t lie. He’s a master Legilimens, he’ll know if you do, and he’s a paranoid bastard so you probably won’t even live to regret it.”

Hermione nodded and took the bag, securing it across her body just like her older counterpart had done.

Somehow she made herself stop shaking as she followed her older self to the device, which was still smoking faintly, and strapped herself in. Was she really going to do this? Was she really willing to _die_ for this, for the possibility of what she’d seen in the Mirror?

She looked at her other self and remembered, seeing in the mirror, an expression of love in a pair of black eyes, a love so deep and true that even seeing it through the Mirror it had warmed her, chasing away the endless fog of misery for days afterwards.

 _Yes_ , she thought, and smiled to herself. _I’m really going to do this_.

The older Hermione, who was beginning to look ever so faintly transparent around the edges, began to fiddle with the dials and knobs that littered the device here and there and, after a time that seemed like an eternity, finally stepped back.

“It’s set for forty years,” she said, and her voice was beginning to sound…thin. Insubstantial, as though she was more _somewhere else_ than she was in this time and place. “Just pull the lever and you’ll be at Hogwarts during your sixth year.”

“Does it hurt?” Hermione asked, and the other Hermione looked confused for a moment before catching Hermione’s glance at her right hand, which was almost entirely transparent.

“What? Oh. No. No, it doesn’t hurt at all. Now, all you need to do is to pull that big lever over there, and you’re on your way. Good luck, kid.”

“And you,” Hermione said, for want of anything better to say, and wrapped her hand around the lever.

A moment later the device began to whine, and a vague gray mist appeared between her and her older self.

The old woman lifted a hand in a casual sort of wave, and then she was gone, and Hermione was alone again in the machine she had, in the future, designed and built in secret to change the world.

The trip was a nightmare. The pain began almost as soon as she entered the _between_ space, and didn’t let up for so much as a second. It just grew worse and worse, like a Crucio held too long, like the nightmares of Bellatrix that she still had sometimes, spreading through her limbs like a poison.

Even as she began to scream, Hermione realised that they had miscalculated. She might have had hours, if she hadn’t been bound by vows. As it was, she would likely only have minutes once she arrived, before the combination of entropic coalescence and her strained marriage vows tore her apart.

Somehow, she made herself stop screaming. She dove behind the thickest, most complex Occlumency wards she could construct, keeping her consciousness separate from the pain as much as she could. She might have only minutes, but she had the memories her other self had prepared, and she had the potions. She _could_ do this. If all else fails, she'd use the same trick he would, and expel her memories as she died.

She would not allow herself to fail.

She was still working on her shields when the shaking stopped and the grey nothingness of _between_ cleared away.

Hermione looked around.

 _Yes_. She was in the right place. She’d never seen the room before, but the man – oh, yes. She’d seen him before. Seen him swooping around the halls of Hogwarts like a wizarding Darth Vader. She’d seen him in battle, and she’d seen him weary, and she’d seen him dead. And for a year now, she’d been watching this man through the Mirror of Maybe, as he lived a life full to the brim with love and joy and sharing...all the things that Hermione didn't have, all the things that nobody in her time had.

 _Yes._ This was what she had given her life for. This was why she was here.

Made almost fearless by the combination of pain and Occlumency and certain death, Hermione grinned at a man who had been dead for thirty-nine years, and who currently had his wand pointed at her.

“Hello, Professor Snape,” she said, and was completely unaware of the fact that she had already begun to bleed from her nose as her brain tried to turn itself inside-out to satisfy her vows, and that her bloody-toothed grin was more than a little disturbing. “It’s been awhile.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so apparently I can't do Evil Ron Weasley without mitigating circumstances. Sigh.


	3. 4 September 1996 – Severus Snape’s Private Quarters, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted this chapter to take us further in the story, but in the end I couldn't resist ending it there.

 

Severus’ ears were still ringing from that godawful sound, which was very much like the bastard lovechild of an air raid siren and a wonky TARDIS. Still, he doubted that he could blame his faulty hearing for the insanely cheerful greeting the woman had just bestowed on him.

People who were bleeding from the eyes should not be cheerful. It was against the laws of nature.

“Who are you?” he demanded, his wand pointed between the woman’s eyes.

Her eyes looked familiar. Her eyes looked like…Severus took a breath and skimmed the surface of her mind. He could sense occlumency walls as solid as the earth itself, but floating above that was more than enough to give him her identity.

“ _Granger_?”

“Got it in one,” she said, and started coughing. Severus cringed at the sound – it sounded like she was trying to cough up a lung.

Eyes aside, the woman didn’t look much like Granger. She had the right bone structure, but the emaciated thinness of her frame, the ruthlessly tamed hair – none of that was the swotty little know-it-all who had left his classroom only hours ago. And then there was the fact that the woman was clearly several decades older and sitting in something that looked like it had been dreamed up in an opium haze by Wells and Rimbau. She struggled with a strap across her chest and extracted a canvas messenger bag which she handed to him, and then collapsed against the back of her perch, apparently exhausted by the effort.

“You built a _time machine_ ,” he breathed. “Are you MAD?”

“You can rant at my corpse, if it doesn’t dematerialize, the other me did,” Granger said, interrupting him quite shamelessly. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t have time, Professor. I don’t – we thought I’d had more time but the vows…get me a bowl!”

Severus didn’t bother to ask questions.

Appearances aside, he had great respect for Granger’s intellect, when she could be bothered to apply it instead of regurgitating textbooks. If she had thought it necessary to build a time machine, building a time machine probably _had_ been necessary. He conjured a bowl and handed to her.

“What are you-“ he stopped talking, because further questions had just become completely superfluous. Granger bent over until her face was over the bowl and then…and then silver mist began to flow from her eyes and her nose and her mouth, mixing with the blood and streaming into the bowl where it gathered, a silvery mist streaked with scarlet.

Clearly, Granger thought she was dying. Between the bleeding and the coughing and the mention of vows, Severus rather thought she might be right and, under the circumstances, he quite approved of her using the Last Resort. If she survived, which she wouldn’t, she’d be missing most of her memories, but whatever message she’d come to pass on was clearly important enough for her to die in the doing.

While she poured herself into the hastily-conjured bowl, Severus cast a few diagnostic spells. Two of them didn’t work at all while another showed her bound up in vows that wrapped around her organs and her brain, so intertwined in her magic that he’d be bloody surprised if she could use it at all. And there was something…Severus cast another diagnostic, one of the ones he’d learned in preparation for the Healing apprenticeship he’d never taken thank you very much Tom fucking Riddle. When the results came in, he took a quick step back.

Entropic coalescence. The ultimate fear of anyone who worked with time – that you could spend so much time in the _between_ that the universe just…kicked you out. _Unmade_ you. If he’d had any doubts at all that this woman was a time traveller, they had just been laid to rest.

And there was nothing he could do for her. She was as good as dead already, her organs shutting down one by one as an Unbreakable Vow took its toll. Severus didn’t bother to ask her what vow was killing her. Her memories would tell him soon enough.

Granger didn’t speak again. When she was done with the memories she handed him the bowl and sagged in her seat, looking at him blankly.

“I’m dying, aren’t I,” she said almost calmly.

“You are,” he said, and conjured a damp cloth to clean the blood from her face. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” she said with a small grin. “You’ll take the better path, won’t you?”

“I…will certainly try,” Severus said, and she grabbed his hand with surprising strength. It was the oddest sensation, as though his skin didn’t know what to make of her. She felt just this side of real, very close to insubstantial.

“NO,” she said. “You won’t try. There is no _try_ in this situation, Professor. Do, or do not. There is _no try_.”

Her words forced a chuckle from him.

“Really, Granger? Star Wars on your deathbed? You really are the ultimate nerd, aren’t you.”

“Let you in on a secret, Professor,” she said, and against his better judgement he leaned closer so as to hear her whispered last words. “I’m pretty sure this thing isn’t supposed to make a noise at all.”

Severus jerked his head back, staring at the fading woman in her strange time machine. He put together the noise the thing had made, old episodes of Doctor Who, and Granger’s smug little grin, and came up with the fact that Granger really was the queen of all the nerds.

“Well done, Miss Granger,” he said, stepping away from the machine. “Well done indeed.”

Granger shimmered and faded some more, and then she was gone and Severus was alone again, with the bag and the bowl full of memories, and not the faintest clue what he was supposed to do next.


	4. 9 September 1996 – Defence Against the Dark Arts Classroom, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains mentions of an attempted rape, which is not described in any detail at all but may still trigger some readers. Please be careful in your reading choices.

“Miss Granger,” Severus called as the class began to pack up, “stay behind.”

He could see the girl’s eyes widen as she froze, and the suspicious looks on her friends’ faces as she set her book bag neatly on her table to wait for the rest of the class to leave.

He’d spent five days examining the stash of memories from the future Miss Granger – or Mrs Weasley, as the case may be. The Last Resort memories had been, as expected, chaotic and not complete – some of the memories having been damaged by the violent expulsion process. The bag she had handed him, however, had contained, wrapped in Potter’s invisibility cloak (to protect from temporal build-up?  A possibility, considering that the outside of the bag had dissolved along with her) several carefully labelled vials of memories along with several potions and page upon page of notes written in a code he couldn’t decipher. Severus was working on the assumption that the current Miss Granger might be able to crack the code, and suspected that forcing them to work together to untangle the mystery was a positively Dumbledorian bit of manipulation on the oldest Granger’s part.

For himself, Severus was…intrigued. The sixty-something Granger was a beaten-down shell of a woman, but the century-old version was a spitfire with a vicious tongue and a mind like a steel trap. He was fascinated by the two very different versions of Granger he’d met, and was curious to know how the Granger currently waiting for the class to empty – _his_ Granger – would develop if she was unhampered by the botched bonding ceremony with Weasley. He suspected that that steel core was something innate, but perhaps she did not have to end up quite so bitter.

But all that was idle curiosity, and he was not planning on spending any more time perusing the mirror memories the eldest Granger had provided him with. If something did occur between him and Miss Granger, so be it, but he certainly was not going to encourage any such thing. Not only was she his student, but she was also nearly twenty years his junior and, in her current incarnation, one of the most annoying individuals he’d ever met.

As soon as the last student had vacated his classroom, he locked and warded the door, getting a minor thrill from Miss Granger’s expression of alarm as the lock clicked.

“Professor?” she asked, glancing at the door.

“Miss Granger,” he said, leaning against his desk and folding his arms across his chest. “I assume that when you heard of Potter’s disastrous attempts at Occlumency last year, you immediately rushed to acquire this knowledge for yourself. Would I be correct in this assumption?”

The girl nodded nervously, and leaned against her own desk.

“I found a book, but the descriptions…” she waved a hand in the air to illustrate the vagueness of the instructions.

“You attempted to learn Occlumency from a _book_?” he asked incredulously. “Miss Granger, it is _not possible_ to learn Occlumency from a book.”

The girl shrugged.

“Well, I didn’t have anyone willing to teach me, did I, Sir? I did the best I could!”

Severus sighed and raised a hand to forestall the angry tirade he saw on the horizon.

“Apologies, Miss Granger. I should have realised. No doubt you approached the Headmaster?”

“I did, sir. He said no. And then I asked if I could ask _you_ for lessons, and he refused that as well. So I took a book and learned what I could.”

“And what was that?” Severus was surprised to hear that the girl had asked if she could approach him for lessons. He would most likely have refused, but to have Dumbledore blatantly refuse to allow her to learn Occlumency…well, it was not a good sign. It was looking more and more as though Granger the Eldest had been correct in her opinion of the most beloved headmaster in Hogwarts history.

“Very little, to be honest,” she said, tugging on the end of her braid. “I _think_ I’ve managed to figure out how to hide memories from someone, but I’m not entirely sure that I’m doing it the way the author of the book wanted me to do it. Frankly, sir, the information on Occlumency that I was able to find was…well, rubbish. And I haven’t been able to get anyone to actually test me on it, so I don’t know if it will hold up to scrutiny.”

Severus nodded. That was one of the reasons that Occlumency could not be taught from books. The most vital part of the process was the testing, the exercises to strengthen your mental walls and learn to disguise them until not even the most skilled Legilimens was able to find out what you didn’t want them to know.

“I can test your skills,” he found himself offering.

She looked at him with a gratifying mixture of gratitude, eagerness, and suspicion.

“Thank you, sir, but… _why_?”

“I have come into possession of information that you will need,” he said. “However, I cannot entrust you with said information until I am sure that you will be able to protect it against _anyone_.”

Granger nodded.

“In that case, thank you very much, sir. Would you like to test me now, or…”

“No. You have classes after lunch, and if I am to test your Occlumency powers I will need more time than we have. Meet me in the Room of Requirement after dinner and don’t be seen. Understood?”

The girl nodded and Severus swept from the room, leaving her staring after him.

**

By the time she reached the Room of Requirement that evening, he had already been waiting for several minutes. The Room had become a comfortable study, with two puffy armchairs in front of a fireplace sporting a merry blaze, and Severus had asked for a table where he could put down the Invisibility Cloak bag from Granger the Eldest.

“You’re late, Miss Granger,” he said when she closed the door behind her.

“Sorry, sir, but Harry and Ron were…tenacious this evening.”

Severus gave thought to berating her for wasting his time, but decided not to bother. In the first place, it wasn’t her fault that the ginger and the Potter boy clung so tenaciously to their single source of intelligent thought. In the second place…well, whether he was willing to admit it or not, he _did_ want the future Granger the Elder had seen in the mirror. And while he wasn’t willing to make any moves in that direction himself, he thought that perhaps if he made an effort to be less of a bastard the odds would improve of _her_ making a move.

Not that he was going to turn into the twitching puppy he’d been for Lily, scared to say the wrong thing lest she sever their friendship forever. Not only would he never lower himself like that again, but he suspected that Miss Granger’s friendship, once given, was not revoked so easily. One only had to examine the way the girl was still friends with Ron Weasley after the rat incident to realise that once Hermione Granger decided you were hers, it would take something much worse than a nasty word or two to drive her away.

“Very well,” he said, studying the girl’s nervous posture. “Have a seat, Miss Granger.”

She sat down, and he took the comfortable armchair opposite her.

“Do you believe that you are ready for me to test your walls?”

She looked puzzled, but nodded. The next moment, Severus had his wand pointed at her and hissed the spell.

He dropped into her mind with disappointing ease, and felt a sense of angry disappointment overtake him as he rifled through her memories unopposed, viewing whatever he liked while she made not even the slightest attempt to stop him.

Disgusted, he withdrew, scowling at her.

“Miss Granger,” he hissed, “do not waste my time. Your mind is an open book, you have no defences whatsoever! Obviously, Occlumency cannot be learned from books. We will begin your training tonight – yes, what is it?”

The girl sat back in her chair, obviously startled.

“Sir, I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You didn’t see anything I didn’t want you to see, and what do you mean, _walls_? The book I read didn’t mention any walls!”

“Your Occlumency walls, Miss Granger. You use them to stop an intruder from seeing what you do not wish them to see.”

She flinched.

“Oh. I…didn’t think that was what the author meant, sir, I’m sorry. I guess we will have to start from scratch, then.”

Severus leaned forward, intrigued.

“Miss Granger, what do you mean, I didn’t see anything you didn’t want me to see?”

“Um…well, I…some of the memories are hidden, of course? I mean…perhaps it’s better if I show you, sir?”

“Yes. We will look at the memory of today’s Defence lesson. Then you will hide the memory, and I will attempt to find it again.”

The girl nodded, and Severus went into her mind again. The memory was there, crisp and clear in every detail. When he felt that he’d observed enough that he should be able to find it again, he withdrew.

“Now I hide it, right?” she asked nervously, and Severus inclined his head.

To his surprise, Miss Granger touched the glowing tip of her wand to her forehead and closed her eyes, a tiny wrinkle appearing between her brows as she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. After only a few moments, she took the wand away and looked at Severus.

“Right, you can try again, sir,” she said.

Severus went in again, searching for the memory.

It was gone.

He couldn’t believe it. The memory had been pristine only minutes ago, clear enough that he suspected Granger had an eidetic memory, and now…it was just gone. He followed her through her memories of her day, from breakfast until she arrived in the Room of Requirement with him, and it was…nowhere to be found. The transition between ‘on the way to Defence class’ to ‘leaving the classroom’ was a bit jerky, but Severus had never seen a memory hidden that well. He went on a fishing expedition, examining every memory he could get his mental hands on but there was no sign of the memory he’d viewed earlier.

Severus removed himself from her mind and leapt to his feet.

“Did you store it in your wand?” he asked as he began to pace in front of his chair, acutely aware of Miss Granger’s nervous eyes on him.

“No, sir,” she said. “I hid it in another memory. That’s…that’s not what I’m supposed to do, is it? I mean, the book said to hide what you don’t want the Legilimens to see behind an image and…”

Severus raised an eyebrow at her, and she stopped talking and started fiddling with her braid again, blushing fiercely.

“No, Miss Granger,” he said in a voice dry as the Sahara and plopped himself in his chair. “That is _not_ what the author meant. Now, you will show me how you did it.”

He established the connection again, and pulled the memory of that evening’s dinner to the fore.

“This one,” he said. “Hide it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Granger touched the wand to her forehead again, careful not to break eye contact, and did…something. Severus didn’t quite understand what he was looking at, but as he watched, the memory of Granger’s first birthday party, a hazy half-remembered thing seen from the eyes of a toddler, came forward. Somehow, the baby memory…split open, was probably the best way Severus could describe it, and Granger tucked the dinner memory into it. The baby memory was sealed and tucked back in her childhood where it belonged, and Severus reached out a greedy mental hand to it. It felt like a normal memory. Actually, it was a bit _heavier_ than normal, for want of a better term, as though she had spent a lot of time reliving it. But there was nothing, no hint that the memory contained another memory within it.

“How do you access it?”

“Oh, that bit’s easy,” she said with a smile, and brought the memory to the fore again. She had taken her wand away for this part, he noted, and watched as it opened like a flower and played the dinner memory for him.

Reluctantly, Severus released his grip on Granger’s mind and sat back in his chair.

“Remarkable,” he said, stroking his mouth. “Absolutely remarkable. Your mind appears completely defenceless, and yet…”

Granger was blushing a bright cherry red now, and had a death-grip on her braid.

“I…well, it seems to me that if you have walls, that’s just, well, a signal that you’ve got something to hide, isn’t it?

“Not precisely,” Severus said absently. “A good Occlumens builds walls that can neither be seen nor felt, so that the Legilimens believes that they are seeing all that there is to see. Unfortunately, that form of Occlumency forces one to suppress emotion while hiding memories and is always an active process. _Your_ method, on the other hand, is passive once you’ve hidden the memory, is that correct?”

She nodded.

“I think so. I mean, I hide the memory inside the other memory with magic – it’s more or less the same as when you take a memory out for a Penseive, really, except you don’t expel it from your brain at all. And then it’s…hidden. It becomes sort of vague – I can still remember it, but to experience it fully I have to deliberately access the memory I’ve hidden it in and _open_ it – you know, Sir, it’s really hard to talk about mind magic in a language originally designed to tell the other monkeys where the ripe fruit are!”

To his extreme surprise, Severus found himself laughing softly.

“I have noticed this, Miss Granger. I will attempt to duplicate your method on some of my own memories. I might ask you to teach someone else this method, if that is agreeable?”

She nodded eagerly.

“Of course, sir.”

“Good. Now, I have determined that you will be able to protect the information I am about to give you, but first I have a question for you, Miss Granger. Do you trust that I am in the war on the Order’s side, and not a spy for the Dark Lord?”

To her credit, the girl took a moment to think about it.

“I believe I do, sir.”

Severus relaxed in his armchair, crossing one leg over the other.

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, Miss Granger – _why_ do you trust me?”

The girl worried at her bottom lip again, frowning.

“Well, um…this is going to sound stupid, but…my cat likes you.”

“You’re right,” Severus said, “it does sound stupid.”

“Crookshanks is half-kneazle, sir, and really very clever!” she said defensively.

“Still a cat, Miss Granger,” he drawled.

“He never liked Ron’s rat, even before we knew he was Peter Pettigrew,” she said, leaning forward.

“Cats tend not to like rats, it’s in their nature.”

“But he did get along with Sirius when Sirius was a dog. Which is very much not in his nature. And later he-“ She blushed again, and stopped talking, her eyes dropping to her lap and her hands clenching nervously.

“Later, he…” Severus prompted, and she looked up at him with an almost pleading expression.

“The cat is a very good judge of character, Professor. Can’t you just take my word for it?”

“Miss Granger, you’re trusting a spy based on the reactions of a feline. You will need to give me some evidence for his perspicacity lest I decide that my opinion of your intelligence is flawed.”

Miss Granger sighed and leapt from her chair, going to stand in front of the fireplace with her arms wrapped around herself, her hands clutching her elbows so hard that Severus was sure there would be bruises.

“Crooks liked Sirius during third year. But when we stayed over at Grimmauld during the summer between fourth and fifth year, he’d gone off him. He’d hiss whenever Sirius came into the room. I thought he was just in a bad mood, but then one day…”

Severus leaned his elbows on his knees and studied the girl, her rigid posture, the way she was facing away from him.

“What happened?” he asked bluntly, and Granger shuddered.

“Everyone had gone out. I was in the library and Sirius came in, and he…he started talking about what a pretty girl I was becoming and I didn’t really know what to do, because it’s _Sirius_ , you know? He’s Harry’s godfather, and I – and anyway then he tried to kiss me and I said no and he called me a tease and he tried to – tried to-“

“Did he rape you, Miss Granger?” Severus asked, his voice as gentle as he could make it. Her teeth were chattering, and he fought the urge to go to her and…something. Put his hand on her shoulder, perhaps. Something to show that she wasn’t alone.

“No. No, he wanted to but then Crookshanks…I’d never seen him like that, Professor. Crookshanks, I mean. It was like he’d gone mad! He got Sirius in the face and he stormed out and…well. He never really talked to me after that.” She took a deep breath and wiped at her face, and then turned to face Severus. “So you see, professor. I trust my cat.”

Severus inclined his head.

“Clearly, your cat is a good judge of character. I myself did not like Sirius Black, but not even I would suspect that he’d attempt to violate a sixteen-year-old girl.” He paused. “Did you tell anyone about this?”

She shook her head.

“I…I couldn’t tell Harry. You know how he was back then. And if I’d tried to tell the Headmaster…well, the Headmaster really liked Sirius. I didn’t want a repeat of what happened to you, sir.”

“What happened to me,” Severus repeated quietly. “You thought he would sweep the matter under the rug.”

“Well, you got detention when Sirius nearly killed you, sir. I guess I was afraid that Professor Dumbledore would make me…not able to talk about it. Like you were. I can read between the lines, sir, and I don’t know what he threatened to make you keep quiet about it, but I didn’t want anything like that to happen to me.”

“So you swept it under the rug yourself,” Severus said drily.

“Well, you can think of it that way, I guess. But I mean, I’m still _able_ to tell people if I want, so it’s not – it’s not as bad as you had it. I mean, I was able to warn Ginny not to be alone with him, and really, we were the only people at risk.”

Severus nodded his approval. It had, in the end, been a sensible decision. He was under no illusion that the headmaster would put Miss Granger’s, or even Miss Weasley’s safety above Potter’s need for a family. That Granger had seen that clearly enough to ensure that she could not be forced into silence, allowing her to warn others who were at risk, was a testament to her clear-headedness.

“A sensible decision,” he said.

“I thought so, yes,” she said with a little smile. “If you don’t mind, professor…the information you mentioned? Could I…”

“I’m afraid it’s getting very late, Miss Granger,” he said. “We will meet back here tomorrow evening, and I will reveal the information to you. Is that acceptable?”

He could see that it wasn’t. The girl’s curiosity must be eating her alive, and his inner bastard found that idea really rather delightful.

“Of course,” she said, getting to her feet. “I don’t want to miss curfew.”

“Miss Granger,” he said, stopping her halfway to the door. “Hide your memories. No-one is allowed to know of these meetings. Not even the Headmaster.” _Especially_ not Albus, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. It was one thing to trust him based on the actions of a cat, but quite another to realise that he was planning on fucking all Albus’ plans right to hell and back.

She touched her wand to her forehead and, after a minute or so, nodded to herself and grinned.

“Done. I’ll see you tomorrow, sir. And I’ll do another pass before bed to make sure I got everything, don’t worry.”

She stopped at the door and turned back to him.

“Thank you, sir. For, for helping me with the Occlumency, and for letting me talk about the thing with Sirius. It’s a bit of a relief to tell someone, even after all this time.”

Severus nodded.

“It was my pleasure, Miss Granger,” he said quietly. “Now, begone, before you lose your house points they really can’t afford.”

The girl was smiling as she left.

For his part, Severus drew his wand and placed it against his forehead. He had a new technique to learn and then, he had memories to hide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Occlumency. I really can't help it.


	5. 10 September 1996 – Room of Requirement, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Scotland

Hermione approached the door to the Room of Requirement with a certain amount of, she felt, perfectly justified concern. Professor Snape had been acting weird the day before. Almost _nice_. Hermione was used to the spiky, temperamental Professor Snape who always looked like he was one wrong word away from justified homicide; she had no idea what to do with a Snape who was apparently determined to act like a reasonable human being.

He'd even been pretty kind about the whole Sirius debacle, which…well, she supposed she shouldn’t have really been surprised at that. She’d long ago learned that while Professor Snape might look like he wanted to poison them all on a daily basis, he’d actually cut off his own arm before allowing a student to come to harm. There had been that incident in third year, for example, when Malfoy had lobbed something into her cauldron and she’d found herself tackled to the ground by a hundred and thirty pounds of snarling Potions Master, who’d taken the brunt of the explosion in her place. And the werewolf incident, of course.

In the end, she’d decided to just go with the flow. It wasn’t like she had that many options, to be honest. If she refused to come back, he’d find a way to make her life miserable, and Harry’s tactic (deliberate or otherwise) of being so obnoxious that the professor had probably felt it was either avoid him or murder him, was not something that she could do.

She’d barely stepped through the door when a ginger blur shot past her, scurried across the room, and planted itself in Professor Snape’s lap, starting up a purr like a tractor as, after raising a startled eyebrow, the professor began to stroke him.

“Crookshanks!” Hermione cried as she closed the door behind her.

“Ignore him, Miss Granger,” Professor Snape said with what was very nearly a smile. “I find that it’s not much use, trying to dissuade a cat that’s made up its mind. Have a seat, if you will.”

The arrangements of the room was much like it had been last week, with the addition of a low coffee table containing an odd collection of objects. There was a Penseive, smaller than any she’d ever seen and filled to the brim with swirling silver memories just like Harry had described, several large glass Potions bottles, and what looked like a book. As Hermione sat down opposite the professor, she studied the objects. She could sort of grasp the point of the Penseive, if Professor Snape wanted to give her information that she might not believe – it was virtually impossible to fake a memory well enough that it would pass muster in a Penseive, although her research had indicated that it was much easier to fool a Legilimens with false memories. The potions and the book, however…Hermione made an effort to still her curiosity and settled herself comfortable on the chair, watching Professor Snape pet Crookshanks with every appearance of pleasure.

“I asked you here to give you information that may have a great effect on not only the outcome of the war, Miss Granger, but your personal life and, if what I’ve deduced from the memories I’ve viewed, the fate of the world.”

Hermione glanced at the Penseive.

“If you don’t mind me asking, sir, where did you get the information? How reliable is it?”

“I consider the source above suspicion, Miss Granger, as you will understand once you have viewed the memories I’ve prepared for you. As for where I received it…that will become clear as soon as you enter the Penseive. Before you do that, however, I feel I must ask you for a wand oath not to reveal what is discussed here, or any plans we may formulate as a result of said discussion, with _anyone_ without my agreement. Are you willing?”

Hermione nodded immediately, and pulled out her wand to touch the tip to his. Professor Snape was clearly very concerned about the secrecy of the endeavour, and she wouldn’t want to put him at risk with a careless word, so it was no hardship for her to repeat the words of the vow after him.

Satisfied, Professor Snape waved a languid hand at the Penseive.

“The memories are incomplete, I’m afraid,” he said with a wry twist to his mouth. “Some of them were gathered in a particularly traumatic fashion, and a number of memories I suspect were vital were contained in vials that did not survive the trip. I’ve included some of my own memories of things I know and suspect, in order that you may have as clear a picture as I can provide at this time. Proceed, Miss Granger. The memories are largely unpleasant. Prepare yourself.”

Hermione nodded and picked up the brimming Penseive, cradling it in both hands like a Japanese soup bowl as she brought it to her face and leaned down until her nose touched the swirling silver memories.

**

Hermione had no idea how long it had been since she’d entered the Penseive when she found herself back in her own body, placing the memory bowl on the table with hands that shook so badly that the memories nearly spilled.

“ _Jesus_ ,” she said, rubbing both hands across her face before taking her braid in one hand and giving it a good yank. It was a habit she’d developed in first year, when she hadn’t quite believed that she really was in magic school, and as it did then, it reassured her that she wasn’t dreaming.

She couldn’t sit still.

Jumping to her feet, she paced the circumference of the Room of Requirement with rapid, almost frantic steps, trying to slot the memories she’d seen into some kind of order.

The memories had been from three distinct sources – two different versions of herself and Professor Snape – and perhaps the confusion of it all was part of why her mind was in a whirl, but she suspected that it was mostly the information she had just learned that was making her ill.

She wasn’t entirely sure which part was worse. The professor’s memories were horrible – the vow to Narcissa Malfoy, and the conversation with Dumbledore where the headmaster ordered Snape to murder him with as much emotion as her mum put into ordering take-out. Less, actually, because her mum got pretty worked up about take-out sometimes. And then there was the conversation about Harry…Harry who…no, she wasn’t thinking about that. She put a mental pin in the memory and shuffled it off to the back of her mind, where it lurked, a complete emotional breakdown just waiting for her to take it out and look at it properly.

The younger Hermione, the one who’d died in Professor Snape’s quarters while delivering her message, was so miserable, and Hermione hadn’t quite been able to figure out what had gone wrong there, not until she’d viewed the eldest Hermione’s memories and been buried in a wash of horror that still made her feel filthy. What she’d seen in the Penseive was going to give her nightmares for the rest of her life, she just knew it.

“She…she experimented on Muggles,” she finally managed, choking back the urge to be sick. “And magic folk. She infected them with…and then she _experimented on them_ and some of them _died_!”

“Most of them, I suspect,” Professor Snape said dispassionately. “None of the wizards and witches she tested her potions on survived either, until the final iteration.”

Hermione stared at the potions on the table, and wanted to destroy them. What had her other self been _thinking_? If there had been a reason for her actions – but Hermione’s mind threw up the blood-stained tables and sterile white cells where the eldest Hermione had run her experiments, the screams of her victims while the tiny, white-haired old woman studied them with cold black eyes, and she couldn’t imagine _any_ reason for what she had done.

“You said…you said the information came from a source that is above suspicion,” Hermione choked out, not looking at the professor. It was ridiculous, but she felt ashamed of what her future self had done, and she didn’t want to see the revulsion in Professor Snape’s eyes when he looked at her. “That woman was…” she shook her head.

“Miss Granger, sit down,” Professor Snape snapped, and Hermione found herself back in the armchair without quite recalling how she’d got there. Crookshanks left the professor and planted himself in her lap, and Hermione had the vaguely hysterical thought that kneazles were supposed to be able to sense evil, and if those memories were at all genuine – and every sign she’d read about indicated that they were completely unaltered – then she was going to be evil on a scale that Voldemort could only dream of.

“She was _evil_ ,” she finally burst out. “She _tortured people_ , sir! Why – why would you show me that?”

“Calm yourself, Miss Granger!” Professor Snape snarled, and leapt to his feet to take his own turn about the room. When he found himself behind the chair he leaned forward, both his slender hands wrapping around the back of the chair as he studied her. “Miss Granger, you are, on the whole, a good person. I cannot believe that you would have done what your eldest self did unless you perceived there to be a truly dire need.”

“Sir, but no need can excuse…” she started, seeing again the horrors below Eldest Hermione’s lonely little house in Wales. “She committed _atrocities_ , sir!”

“She did. And then, Miss Granger, she came back in time, knowing she would die, to bring this information, and the potions she developed, to me. _Think,_ Granger. Apply that brilliant mind of yours for once. If she was evil, would she sacrifice her life that way?”

Hermione took a moment to think about it. It wasn’t exactly easy.

“I-no,” she said eventually. “I mean, V-You Know Who, he’s all about immortality, right? So, she…but she still-“

“I believe we need to find out _why_ she did it,” the professor said. “And I believe the answer may be in there.” He pointed out the book, and Hermione picked it up.

“You haven’t read it, sir?”

“It’s in no language I recognize, although the script does look familiar,” Professor Snape said, eyeing the book with disfavour. “Translation spells return gibberish. I’m assuming that your eldest self thought you would be able to make sense of it.”

Hermione glanced at the book. It was thin, but heavier than it looked, with a plain brown leather cover and no title.

She opened the book on the first page, and began to laugh quietly, with tears leaking down her face.

When she finished the letter, she looked back up at Professor Snape, her expression serious.

“She had a good reason, sir,” she said. “We may have won the war, but we lost the world.”

Professor Snape sighed and seemed to sink into his chair, as though he’d been hoping that Eldest Hermione had gone mad, or just bad. Hermione didn’t blame him. Knowing that the situation in the future was so dire that her eldest self had decided to do _this_  was…well, it wasn’t good.

“As a matter of interest, Miss Grange,” Professor Snape said, reaching for the book. “What language is this?”

“Um…it’s Quenya, sir,” Hermione said, blushing furiously. “It’s from…”

“Lord of the Rings,” Professor Snape completed for her, scowling. “I am aware of the books. And it’s not as though you being a nerd is exactly news to me, Miss Granger,” he added with a small smirk. “You will have to translate as you read, and provide me with the resources to learn this language. Now, read the first page if you please. In English.”

Hermione frowned at him, but he merely sat back more comfortably in the chair, giving every impression of being willing to stay there the rest of the night, or until Hermione translated the letter for him.

With a small shake of her head, she began to read.

In English.


	6. Hermione's Letter to Herself

To my younger self

Hermione, by now you will no doubt have seen some of what I have done. I cannot say that I am proud, but neither am I ashamed. You, looking forward from ninety years ago, may be horrified, but even you will eventually understand why I did what had to be done.

I am not sure what the date is when you are reading it. You may or may not already be aware of the existence of the Dark Lord's horcruxes. If you are not - he made seven of them. One of them is in Harry.

An interesting fact that nobody knew about horcruxes - when the soul is split, it becomes more and more unstable with every division, until parts of it can change...mutate, if you will.

This happened with at least one of the horcruxes.

The portion of the Dark Lord's soul that was contained in the locket you saw in my memories became, for want of a better word, infectious.

By the time Ronald died ten years ago, the parasitic soul-fragment had taken him over completely, and I believe that that same fragment, finding a fertile host in Ginny after her experience with the diary, infected her. The infection spread from there. My children are evil, my grandchildren are positively vicious. The infection has spread slowly but surely throughout the wizarding population. Ten years ago one in three of my samples were infected. Today, the infection rate is 100%. I believe that I am infected – I must be, or I could not have done what I have done.

I will not bore you with the details of my life under Ron’s rule, or with the details of what the world is like in the year 2090, but suffice to say it was grim.

This, sending this information and the potions I have developed to the two people who can do the most with it, is the only option. If I unmake the world as it is now, it can only be an improvement.

This book contains every word of my notes and research over the past ten years, as well as what I can remember from the time I was with Ron. It will enable you and Professor Snape to recreate the potion should it become necessary, although I would not advise allowing the potion to become general knowledge.

The red potion will remove extraneous soul fragments from a living human. Use it on Harry, but only once he is ready. He must be fully anchored in himself before it can work. I believe the soul fragment is dormant at this time, but it might struggle when the potion begins to work. Harry will need to be strong enough to overcome it. You will want to use the potion on Ginny as well. If she is not infected, the potion will do her no harm, but I believe that the diary may have infected her as well, and the soul fragment may already be feeding off her and preparing to spread.

The yellow potion can be applied to inanimate objects to remove soul parts. In the book I have details of the Horcruxes made, and where to find them. A drop or two of the yellow potion will remove and destroy the horcrux without destroying the vessel. I came across this potion while working on the red one. Do not take the yellow potion internally. You can apply it externally to prevent infection - I recommend applying some of the potion before killing any Horcruxes.

I haven't been able to test it on a specimen, but I  _believe_ that the yellow potion may be able to remove the Dark Mark. I've had success using it to remove Dark magic from cursed wounds, so you might want to find a Death Eater you don't particularly like and test it on them.

I wish I could give you more, but all the information you need is in the memories enclosed. Do the best with what you have, precious girl, just as you have always done.

All my love and hope

Hermione

 


	7. 10 September 1996 – Room of Requirement, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (continued)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dangers of posting as you write is that sometimes you write something that seems clever in the moment, only to realise later that it is, in fact, going to make the rest of the story incredibly awkward.  
> To that end, I've removed the P.S from the previous chapter and added some details near the end which I'd forgotten.  
> Enjoy!

 

There was a long silence when Hermione finished the letter, the both of them staring at the potions.

“Horcruxes,” Professor Snape finally snarled. “I should have fucking known.”

“Did Dumbledore know?” Hermione asked, more for something to say than really wanting to know. Surely the headmaster…

“If he didn’t before, he certainly knew by the beginning of this year, Miss Granger,” Snape said grimly. “It was then that the Headmaster brought me to his office to inform me that Potter would need to die to defeat the Dark Lord.”

“But…he didn’t die, though,” Hermione said, trying to work through all the new things she’d learned. “In the future, he was married to Ginny.”

Professor Snape waved that away as inconsequential.

“Naturally there would be some plan in place that would allow Potter to survive, Miss Granger. Albus is not a complete monster, after all. The plan would be convoluted and somewhat mad, but with enough luck it would no doubt work to have Potter survive his death.” He suddenly sat forward, rubbing his hands together.

“But this…this will make it all so much easier.” He looked like a man who’d had a great burden taken from his shoulders, as he eyed the potions with something almost like awe. “You will need to begin working on Potter, to prepare him to take the red potion. I will provide you with texts which will aid you in anchoring Potter’s soul – and Potter’s soul _only_ to his body. He will, sadly, have to do much of the work himself.”

Hermione reached for the tea service that had suddenly appeared on the table between them, and served the professor a cup without being asked. Settling back in the lovely armchair, she crossed one leg over the other and sipped her tea, regarding Professor Snape over the rim of the cup.

“How much of this can I tell Harry?”

“Nothing about the contamination, I think,” Snape said, sipping his own cup. She’d never seen him this relaxed before, and she absently wondered if this was what he was like with his colleagues. “The letter implied that you would have become aware of horcruxes soon. Perhaps when Potter informs you of the existence of the Dark Lord’s horcruxes, you may begin to speculate about the possibility…”

Hermione nodded quickly.

“Yes, that could work. I’ll say I came across a reference and did some research, the boys will believe that.” She smiled when the professor gave a brief chuckle.

“Indeed they will, Miss Granger.”

“We’re going to need to talk about the Dumbledore situation eventually, you know,” Hermione said, watching with a bit of regret as Professor Snape’s entire bearing changed, becoming as cold as it ever was in class.

“There is nothing to discuss,” he said flatly. “When the time comes, I will kill Dumbledore. You know about Unbreakable Vows, I presume?”

Hermione nodded.

“Does it have to be so obvious, though?” she asked. “I mean, really, off the Astronomy Tower? Isn’t that a bit…”

“It needs to be _witnessed_ , Granger,” the professor snapped. “And I should think that one of his favoured cubs would be rather more upset about his murder than you seem to be.”

Hermione scowled.

“We’ll have to think of something else, but we have time,” she said. “And I’m just following the Headmaster’s own advice, sir.”

“What advice?”

“Well, at the end of last year, when I went to him and said that Yaxley had threatened to go after my parents, he refused to help them or hide them-” Professor Snape’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead – “and he told me that we must all bow to the regrettable necessities of war. Well, if my parents are an acceptable loss, then so is he,” she finished coldly.

Professor Snape looked like he didn’t quite know what to say to that.

“Are your parents still at risk, Miss Granger?”

“They left,” she said. “Before the start of term. They sold everything they owned and left, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again but at least they’re safe.”

He nodded.

“Now,” he said, and put his empty cup on the table. “I think it is time for us to adjourn. We will need to plan for another meeting – perhaps in a week, when you’ve had time to translate more of your older self’s work.”

“Actually, sir, I have a question,” she said, and watched him settle back in his chair. “The other me…why did she stay?”

“I-“ Hermione watched as Professor Snape began to blush. He was _not_ a pretty blusher, she reflected as a tide of mottled red crept up his cheeks. “I believe she may have been captured in a Prima Nocte Binding.”

“What is-“

“It’s a-“ he sighed. “It’s a bond, of sorts, that develops between two magical people when one of them loses his or her virginity. It can be created by a man or a woman, and between two men or two women, as long as the experience is at least one of the partners’ first time.”

“And what does the bond-“

“Do, Miss Granger?” He leaned back in his chair and put one leg over the other, regarding her closely over his steepled fingers. She was beginning to blush under his close regard, and the subject matter was _not_ helping, but she nodded anyway. “The bond is…flexible. In a way. It requires only the consent of one party – whether the virgin or the experienced partner, but the bond becomes brittle and quite painful if it is unbalanced. I would posit that the Mr Weasley married to your future self did not inform her of the dangers, and imposed the binding on her in the twenty-four-hour grace period after the…event. Once the bond is created it can only be broken by death. Even a temporary death, such as having one’s heart stopped but restarted or something similar could disrupt an unbalanced bond.”

“So that’s why-“

“Yes, that’s why she couldn’t leave. It is quite likely part of why she went mad as well – a botched bond like the one she suffered would cause a great deal of emotional distress to the victim. Why did you think you were told to think carefully about whether you could trust a potential partner?”

“I was thinking about STDs, actually,” Hermione said grimly, and watched him flush again. “I certainly wasn’t thinking that I could end up bound to someone for life!”

“Yes, well, things are different in the wizarding world, Miss Granger. There is a _reason_ that the Malfoys have spent the last hundred years bleating about bringing Muggleborns into the wizarding world at a younger age, and knowing about things like the Prima Nocte Binding is part of it.”

Hermione wasn’t going to touch that one with a pole, but she had _so many questions_.

“But what if-“

“Books!” Professor Snape barked, stuffing the potions awkwardly in a knapsack and striding toward the door, his entire face scarlet. “Find a book, Miss Granger, because I’m not explaining it to you.”

Hermione was left alone in the Room of Requirement, wondering why he’d been blushing and wondering, too, whether she really _wanted_ to know what he was talking about.

“Of course you do,” she muttered, scribbling a note on a spare bit of parchment. “How can you protect yourself if you don’t know?”

She took a glance at the time and decided that she had enough time to corner Madam Pince before curfew, if she hurried.

Thirty minutes later she was behind the curtains of her bed, re-reading a passage in the book a scowling Pince had shoved into her hands and hoping that she was imagining it.

But no, the book was quite clear on the idea that losing one’s virginity was a much, _much_ bigger deal to wizards and witches than it was to Muggles, and she spent nearly an hour reading about all the million and one things that could go wrong with the binding, as well as the many, many benefits.

Just before she fell asleep, she wondered if Future-Ginny had caught Harry with that Binding, and how he’d felt about it.


End file.
